


Come Let Me Love You

by bunnyofnegativeeuphoria



Category: Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness - Fandom, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: But mostly fluff, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, brief mention of character death, but no actual death, mckirk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 22:03:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1178458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnyofnegativeeuphoria/pseuds/bunnyofnegativeeuphoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You fill up my senses,<br/>Come fill me again.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Jim…”</p>
<p>“That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.” </p>
<p>“How can you wear out a name?”</p>
<p>“I dunno, but yours seemed pretty tired, so I gave you a new one.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come Let Me Love You

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Well, I obviously don't own anything in the Star Trek franchise other than my right to place the characters in different situations inside my head. Sometimes on paper. Like now. But I don't own Star Trek. Sadly.
> 
> A huge thank you to my spacegf (who shall remain anonymous but she is the best friend to ever friend) and aranel_parmadil for beta-reading for me. I appreciate both of you very much, particularly because McKirk isn't your thing :)

“Fuck you, Leonard.”

 

A deep breath. One. Two. Three.

 

One, two, three steps to the door. “Len-” pause. “Nothing.” Zero.

 

“Daddy?” Something. Some _one_. Someone precious.

 

“Go to your room, Jo.” Someone lost.

 

One, two, three steps to the door.

 

 

~*~

 

The slamming of the door breaks Leonard from his reverie. Three bags are slung over his shoulder – his life haphazardly bundled away, weighing him down. He stands at the step, closed door behind him, the world at his feet and nowhere to go.

 

The heart is a muscle. It pumps blood through your body.

 

In his left-hand breast pocket is a wedding ring, the weight pumping agony through his body.

 

He stoops to find his PADD, removes it from the safe haven of his bag. He looks for the first ride out of here The background is not of two people in love. The background is a little girl. One. One precious someone.

 

The heart is a muscle. It pumps blood through your body. The girl is all smiles. It pumps hope through his heart.

 

 

~*~

 

 

One, two, three. A cough.

One, two, three. A sigh.

 

One, two, three more cadets enter the shuttle. One completely ignores the bags at his feet. Two trips over them on her way to the seat. Three sits beside him and rests his feet on them.

 

One plus two is three. A sigh. _Disease._ The shuttle powers up. _Danger._ Knuckles tighten, muscles tense and breathing is suddenly impossible. _Darkness and silence._ A hand stills his.

 

Three is a lot more than one or two.

 

The hand remains for one, two, three hours. The shuttle lands, and cadets leave. One, two, three.

 

Three bags are slung over his shoulder. No bags are slung over _his._ Nothing. “Jim Kirk.” Something.

 

Some _one_. One. One is more than nothing.

 

“Leonard McCoy.” Two. His face splits into a breathtaking grin. Its warmth spreads from the handshake, up through the veins in his arm, up into his heart and bursts throughout his clammy, cold body. The hand leaves, but the warmth remains as Jim picks up one of his three bags and leads the way off the claustrophobic death-trap shuttle.

 

Two is lighter than three.

 

~*~

 

 

“Hey man, you gave me alcohol on the shuttle, at least let me help you move in.”

 

The smile is not as radiant this time, but no less genuine or gentle. Confident strides carry the man-child-sun towards the dumped-on-the-floor bags and he starts to shuffle through Leonard’s things. He methodically strips the bags and lays out the miserable tangibles of Leonard’s life on his bed. Out of order.

 

“Kid, I’ve only got three bags o’ nothing, an’ besides – kid, put my boxers down, dammit!”

 

Jim has collected all his clothes and started placing them in his closet and drawers. The boxers in question are placed in the middle drawer. “Jim, put them down. You don’t know where they’ve been.”

 

“I think they’ve been hugging and hiding that gorgeous ass of yours, Bones.”

 

Refused-to-acknowledge heat floods his cheeks at that comment, and so he lets the kid take his things and place them around the room in logical, and illogical, places. After a minute or so he feels a bit affronted at the kid’s presumption, and a bit panicked at someone else yet again rearranging his life, so he grabs socks out of Jim’s hands and drops them carelessly next to his underwear. Just like he always has. Jim, though, just grabs them again and place them into the bottom drawer. When he starts to protest, Jim says “Bones, you have to have a separate drawer for socks.”

 

“I’ve never had a separate sock drawer. I’ve never had, and probably never will have, enough socks to warrant a separate sock drawer. Why then, would I want a separate sock drawer?”

 

“Where else are you going to hide your lube, condoms and porn mags?”

 

Leonard thinks the heat in his face is threatening to return ASAP, only to discover that it never really left. He tugs at his collar and wonders vaguely if he’ll ever feel cold in this person’s presence.

 

He flails, “Why would I hide them?”

 

“That’s the spirit!” the kid exclaims happily and returns the socks to lie neatly next to his underwear.

 

~*~

 

 

Jim is one, two, three steps out of the door when Leonard sits heavily down on his academy-issue bed and peruses the bedroom.

 

One, two, three bags are now tucked away on the top of the closet, and the life Jocelyn didn’t take is unfolded before him. There are clothes in the closet, a copy of Grey’s Anatomy on a shelf, joined by numerous PADDs containing medical textbooks and a few novels by Agatha Christie. His wedding ring lies buried in the underwear-sock drawer. It was his father’s, so he doesn’t have the heart to throw it away. On his nightstand, a picture of Joanna. On the wall hangs a picture of them both. In the kitchen are three boxes of Chinese that the kid ordered before he took off.

 

The heart is a muscle. It pumps blood through your body. Three out of an infinite amount is not a significant amount, yet three beats pump three moments of joy through is body. One: Joanna. Two: a memory. Three? Three boxes of Chinese takeaway bought for him by a man he met only hours ago.

 

Three precious beats. He counts them, holds them, keeps them.

 

~*~

 

 

One, two, three weeks into his enrolment at Starfleet and genius-repeat-offender-James T “Call me Jim” Kirk is a steady presence in his life.

 

It’s six o’clock in the morning.

 

“Hey Bones! Turn that frown upside-down!”

 

Three weeks into his Starfleet career and James Troublesome Kirk is an annoying presence in his life.

 

It’s only when Jim nudges him in the shoulder that he realizes that the grumbling noise he’s hearing is not, in fact, thunder from an impending apocalypse, but coming from his own mouth. “Bones?”

 

“It’s six o’clock in the Goddamn morning, and you’re calling me ‘Bones’.”

 

“Yeah”

 

“Jim…”

 

“That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.”

 

“How can you wear out a name?”

 

“I dunno, but yours seemed pretty tired, so I gave you a new one.”

 

~*~

 

 

One, two, three months into his over-worked life at Starfleet it is Joanna’s birthday, and Leonard gets amazingly drunk in a fuck-ass bar. His fingers are numb, his legs are numb, his head is numb, the alcohol having dulled most of his senses. As he half-heartedly checks out a passing guy, travelling up the Adonis’ body only to discover it to be Jim, he decides that the alcohol has dulled most of his reason too. He nearly grins at the irony as he clutches his glass towards him, half-terrified that Jim will take it away. Fully terrified to _feel_ again. Jim, however, signals the bartender for another round for him and asks him what happened.

 

He stares emptily at the Bourbon, and the silence is palpable despite the noise of everyone else around them. In a fit of rage he nearly clashes the glass to the floor, but a hand stops him. He is surprised to find his eyes wet with tears when hazel meets knowing pools of blue and he remembers that this man is possibly just as fucked-up as him. Leonard looks into Jim’s eyes and sees pain, understanding and compassion and remembers nights holding his friend in his arms as his flannel shirt grew wetter and wetter, his body heaving with sobs not his own. He looks into Jim’s eyes and sees something indefinable, something unknown, and a blink reminds him of warm hands encasing his, protecting them from the spilled alcohol on the counter. One, two, three beats and a story pours out of his mouth. It’s a story he always knew he had, but never understood he could give to someone else, and it’s just been three fucking months for God’s sake, but he realizes that his story is not the first one exchanged between them. He realizes it is quite possible that they know each other better than anyone else ever did.

 

When his breath hitches, warm hands tighten around his. When he stops to breathe, patient eyes caress his own. When he is finished, soft hands upon his cheeks and a soft smile lead him back to the academy and into a warm bed. As he puzzles over the untouched glass of Bourbon left behind at the bar, a repetition of warmth and gentleness tucks him in, the hissing sting of a hypo eased by a tender kiss on his brow, and the image of Jo on his nightstand soothes his mind into dreams of belated birthday presents as the solid body stretched out around him makes him realize that this man defies the universe’s natural realm of possibilities. His presence cocoons his battered soul in such a volume of affection that it puts his usual meager quota to shame.

 

Come morning, the hypo ensures that he has not forgotten a single moment of the night before. As he shifts in the bed, an arm tightening around his waist convinces him that he doesn’t mind.

 

~*~

 

 

Three years into Starfleet and Jim is such a solid presence in his life that his heart pumps three beats of sheer terror that threaten to burst through his chest when he realizes that he might have to leave him behind on the hangar deck.

 

One, two, three, and the hand in his starts to pull away. That is all it takes for Leonard to risk everything he has rebuilt in his life for the one thing he cannot live without. His hand tightens its grip on Jim’s. It doesn’t let go.

 

~*~

 

 

Nothing.

 

One, two, three.

 

Nothing.

 

Four, five, six.

 

Nothing.

 

One-hundred-and-seventy-five-thousand-three-hundred-and-two-point-seven-five.

 

Nothing.

 

Something. A flatline beeping out on the medbay bed. A body bag lying beside it. A year after he thought Jim was lost forever he is faced with the imminent reality of his worst fear.

 

_Fallen, cold, and dead_.

 

Five-thousand-and-seventy-three-point-six-nine-eight seconds later it is a tribble, of all things, that re-kindles a sensation in his soul that has only been evoked by two other people before: hope.

 

~*~

 

 

One, two, three.

 

One, two, three.

 

One, two, three.

 

The steady rhythm of the bio bed belies the irregular heartbeat of the person sitting beside it. Its occupant’s eyes flutter in tandem, always in tandem, with the pumping of pure emotion through Leonard’s veins. As they open fully after two weeks of nothing, Leonard cannot be expected to act any differently from a man who has found an oasis in a barren land. So, when the clouds of confusion give way to clear blues of steady recognition, the white-hot ball of contained emotion previously numbed by denial releases in a flood of tears and belated panic. Jim’s hands run through his hair, comforting him like they always do, and his mind expands to a cacophony of mixed feelings that all seem to boil down to how monumentally _stupid_ he has been, and the one, two, three of Jim’s heartbeat thumps in answering determination in his chest as he raises his head and caresses Jim’s face with the tender touch of the one who loves him most in all this world.

 

“Marry me?”

 

“What?”

 

“Marry me.”

 

In the smile that threatens to break off Jim’s face and make a life of its own, Leonard is curiously floored by the absolute adoration he sees. Curious, because he recognizes that expression from nearly every moment they’ve shared together, and he once again chastises himself for having let his fear, having let _Jocelyn_ keep him away from the best decision of his life. He carefully, always carefully, helps Jim into a sitting position and slips onto the bed beside him. Jim finds his place at Leonard’s side again and reattaches himself to him, his arms tightening around Leonard’s middle in a grip of never-letting-go. He tips his face up questioningly, and Leonard is lost in familiar lips full with the passion of Jim’s devotion, handled with the infinite softness of his love, and swallows the litany of “Bones, Bones, Bones.”

 

~*~

 

 

Two. A nice number. An even number. A happy number.

 

~*~

 

 

One month after Jim’s recovery, they are both standing under the huge oak tree on the McCoy family farm, the sun casting a welcoming glow over the beginning of a new chapter in their lives. Together.

 

Spock and Uhura’s eyebrows raise in fond amusement, Scotty’s eyes crinkle in delight, and the rest of the _Enterprise_ crew applaud. After mutual “I do’s” Jim throws his arms around Leonard’s neck and, with a whispered “I love you,” kisses him with infinite playfulness, infinite joy, infinite love.

 

“I know,” he teases back. And he does. And this knowledge unleashes a feeling within him that is second only to the way he feels in the face of Jim’s delight when he amends, “I love you too, Darlin’.”

 

As the cameraman prepares to capture the moment, Joanna sneaks her way between them with a cry of “Daddy! Papa!” and the result is an image of Leonard holding Jim holding Joanna – an image that radiates such happiness that Leonard swears he can feel it through the glass as he caresses it in years to come. An image, that never fails to make him pause in wonder that Jim has decided to command atoms of the universe and build with them a life with him, filled with a love that has proven to be unquantifiable.

 

_Fin_

**_Annie’s Song_ **

You fill up my senses

Like a night in a forest

Like the mountains in springtime

Like a walk in the rain

Like a storm in the desert

Like a sleepy blue ocean

You fill up my senses

Come fill me again

 

Come let me love you

Let me give my life to you

Let me drown in your laughter

Let me die in your arms

Let me lay down beside you

Let me always be with you

Come let me love you

Come love me again

 

You fill up my senses

Like a night in a forest

Like the mountains in springtime

Like a walk in the rain

Like a storm in the desert

Like a sleepy blue ocean

You fill up my senses

Come fill me again

**Author's Note:**

> Title and parts of the summary are taken from 'Annie's Song' by John Denver.
> 
> Disease, danger, darkness and silence are obviously not mine but paraphrased from Star Trek (2009).
> 
> "Fallen, cold and dead" is a line from the famous 'O Captain! My Captain!' by Walt Whitman.


End file.
